OK I heard everyone wants me to write more about Japan, so here's a review of a super insane concert where otaku dress up like godzilla and rap-battle each other and the judges are all naked lady robots.

I'm fucking with you. Actually this post is about how I organize my itunes database. I think you'll find it much more informative.

Finally reached the point where my itunes collection is definitely “too big to listen to every song” so instead of doing the sensible thing – deleting songs – I have decided to do the nerd thing AKA defiantly stop listening to the music altogether and spend my time instead mining the database for staistics.

For starters, here’s how I’ve classified music by genre, and also by percentage:

Classical 0.4%

Crude 2.5

Neofolk 1.4

Drone 1.5

Creepy 0.2

Electronic 1.3

African funk 0.3

Mellow southern 0.2

Regular funk 2.0

Poplocking/naked 0.3

Latin funk 0.2

ALL FUNK 3.0%

Grind 1.4

Industrial 0.9

Jukebox 0.8

Kraut w/drum-machine 0.6

Kraut ambient 0.5

Krautrock 0.5

Psychedelic 1.0

ALL KRAUT 2.6%

(Salsa/meringue/boogaloo/cumbia)

Latin 1.2

Lazy sunday 0.3

Lounge 0.5

Mathcore 1.8

Avant metal 2.1

Atmospheric black 1.7

Folky black 1.8

Orchestral black 0.6

Raw black 0.7

Black metal 2.2

(all black 7.0)

Death metal 1.7

Osdm demos 0.7

Doom metal 3.1

Uncle metal 0.1

Fancy metal 0.2

Power metal 0.6

Thrash metal 0.7

General heavy 1.4

‘70s heavy 0.8

NWOBHM 0.9

ALL METAL 21.2 %

New wave 0.8

Japanese avant rock 0.6

Horror 0.5

Sound effects 0.5

Pop or no category 2.2

Novelty 5.2

Oldies (40s-60s) 1.5

Oldies (1900-1930) 0.2

Rockabilly 0.3

Bluegrass 0.2

Blues 0.2

Dixie/jugband 0.4

Jazz bebop 0.3

Doowop 0.5

ALL OLDIES 3.6%

Dissonant prog 0.7

Folk/ethnic prog 0.4

Fusion 0.7

Heavy prog 0.3

Modern-times prog 0.4

RIO prog 0.7

Soundtracky prog 0.2

Symphonic prog 2.4

Zeuhl 0.8

Zappa 0.7

ALL PROG 7.3%

Punk comps 2.3

Punk 1.1

Hardcore 5.2

Japan punk 0.6

Oi! 0.4

Finland punk 0.4

Swedish punk 0.3

Tardcore 0.3

Uk82 0.7

Postpunk 0.8

Noise rock 0.6

ALL PUNK 12.7%

Ragamuffin / dancehall 0.5

‘70s rap 0.5

Rap beats 1.5

Non-english rap 0.5

Dj scratchin’/mixes 0.7

Rappity rap 6.6

(east: 66%

West: 30%

South: 3%)

ALL RAP 10.3%

Rocksteady 0.2

Schultzzz 0.8

Soundbites 1.5

Soundtracks 0.5

Spoken /comedy 1.8

Africa 0.6

Asia 0.3

Chanting 0.4

Greece 0.06

Gypsy 0.4

India 1.1

Irish 0.3

Japan 1.0

Klezmer 0.2

Middle east 0.3

Misc 0.6

Scandinavia 0.3

South/latin America 0.05

Turkey 0.06

Pirate shanties 0.2

ALL WORLD 7.4%

(total 94.2%, not including songs which I ain’T listened to yet and the odd TTC joint)

AMUSING THINGS ABOUT MY CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM:

“CRUDE” is a category dedicated to a bad habit of mine: searching the internet for all songs with certain words in the title, JUST TO SEE IF I CAN FIND ANYTHING INTERESTING. Words like “buttocks,” (surprisingly few songs. Dissapointing really, especially when you consider there are over 300 songs with the word “anus” in the title) (at least), “peepee”, “poopoo” and so on. The results of some searches are predictable: medical words like “vagina” or “fecal” tend to be only grindcore/deathmetal titles, while in the case of “booty”, duh, funk is highly represented. But other words are less obvious: “goblin” tends to bring up a LOTTTT of techno. Why do techno douches like goblins? Since when? And when it comes to “armpit,” there’s way more ‘60s artists than you’d imagine. “booger” yields a bunch of country and western tunes or Southern r&b. “boner” skews very punk rock – not the hardcore punk, but the sloppy, ramonesy/sex pistolsy punk. A word like “fart” is ALL OVER THE PLACE. You’d think it would just be some Weird Al wannabees, but there’s a suprising amount of avant-garde or experimental bands getting down with their farts. “gnomes” sounds like you’d get a lot of fantasy-themed ‘70s prog, but in fact there’s more death-core bands that come up – you know, the spazzy post-dillinger-escape-plan dongs. They like them some gnomes. Mysterious.

CREEPY refers to bands that are sot of “quiet heavy metal” – songs that are scary and dark and heavy but played really quiet and ominous like AT ANY MOMENT the monster is going to come out of the closet. Yes that’s a whole genre!

JUKEBOX is where I keep single songs – not full albums. Usually these songs are nostalgic things from when I was a kid. Boston! The jukebox now has like 2,000 songs, which I spice up by adding a lot of filler (say, fake DJ scratching or animal SFX) between them. So a sample playlist might go like:

Kansas “carry on my wayward son”

Gibbon grunting

f-f-f-f-f-fresh!!!!

Billy Ray Cyrus “achey breaky heart”

Napalm Death: EUHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Etc.

GRIND: Did you know on Soulseek (a P2P site) you can search for songs BY FILE SIZE? So, hypothetically, you could search for "grindcore" and then rank the results from smallest to largest. By DLing all the smallest files, you could instantly amass a collection of JUST ONE- OR TWO-SECOND-LONG SONGS. Consequently, 90% of my grind collection is only used as filler between '70s songs on the jukebox ! Honestly I don't have any use for this genre besides as a joke.

KRAUTROCK: this is an irritating label because it seems to refer to “all german music in the early ‘70s.” Most of which, I discovered, is shitty wanna-be Led Zeppelin nonsense. Even after you edit out all the fake blues and shitty guitar solos, and control-z all the songs with a lead singer who likes to “improvise poetry” over a “jam” (shout-out to the over-rated Can) . . . .there’s still a bewildering diversity of Fritz music left. And when I’m in the mood for some spacey synths, I don’t want to hear some Kraftwerk drum machines, and when I want drum machines, I don’t want to hear psychedelic jerkoffs. So I had to sort of make my own sub-categories for it.

LATIN: At 1.2% that seems kind of small, but to me it FEELS like 20% at least, probably because I spent so much time editing the songs. See, most salsa/merengue songs tend to be like 2 minutes of really shitty ballad-y nonsense with really complex and sappy jazz chord progressions, before the horns go BLAT! BA-BLAT, BLAT, BYONNNNNNNNNNN!!!! and then it settles into a totally rad one-note groove with call-and-response vocals over it. So pretty much 80% of my latin songs I've had to cut out the first minute or so. Besides the collecting of CRUDE songs, this Salsa Surgery is my other bad habit. But I can't fuckin' help it- there is literally no other genre where the songs are THAT CRAPPY in front and THAT PARTYING in the back. It's like the mullet of music.

UNCLE METAL is my own term for bands like CIRITH UNGOL, MANILLA ROAD, PAGAN ALTAR, BROCAS HELM, SLOUGH FEG. . . . the always-unpopular type of old-school metal that is too fast to be doom, too slow to be thrash, too late to be NWOBHM, but continues to this day somehow, galloping into a fan-less future of poorly airbrushed dragon album covers. . . .

FANCY METAL is a term I got from the perceptive fellows at the ILLOGICAL CONTRAPTION blog. According to them, Fancy Metal is like a lot of different melodies at the same time, usually with female vocals or harmony vocals, and a general epic retro-‘80s Maiden vibe to it.

NO CATEGORY: I have so little pop music, I stash it here, so Blondie and ABBA can rub shoulders with Abnormal Growth and Diamanda Galas.

SOUNDBITES is my THIRD bad habit (besides CRUDE songs and Salsa Surgery) . . . .I got this sweet freeware called REPLAY MEDIA CAPTURE which I guess most users use to "capture" streaming porn so they can watch it later. But I use it to steal the audio punchlines of cartoons – Simpsons, mostly, but also Harvey Birdman, Family Guy, Sunny in Philadelphia, or pretty much any movie with a rediculous dialogue. I have a shamefully large amount of soundbites, which also wind up as filler in the JUKEBOX.

For example:

Abba "gimme gimme a man after midnight"

Frank: "What the shit is a thundergun?"

Dio: "rainbow in the dark"

Llama Spitting SFX

Mooninites "we smoke as we flip the bird"

Zapp : "more bounce to the ounce".

Neil Hamburger "sigh . . . . .oo-kayyyy."

SCHULTZZZ is my own bands. 813 songs so far! That means I have more of MY shit than I do Lounge, Old School Death Metal, Power Metal, New Wave, Horror, Rockabilly, Bluegrass, Classical, Bebop, Doowop, Dancehall, Soundtracks, or Pirate Shanties.

Moving on, let's look at all the music i own BY REGION:

NORTH AMERICA

/CARRIBEAN 41.5%

WEST EUROPE 24.2

ASIA 5.2

EAST EUROPE 2.3

AFRICA 1.4

SOUTH/LATIN AMERICA 0.8

MIDEAST 0.5

AUSTRALIA fuck’em.

And BY COUNTRY why not.

USA 37.4%

England 8.0

Japan 4.6

Germany 2.9

Sweden 2.3

Finland 2.2

France 2.2

Norway 1.7

Italy 1.2

Canada 1.2

Russia 0.9

Jamaica 0.8 (sorry)

Holland 0.5

Ireland 0.46

Australia 0.44

India 0.41

Spain 0.35

Swiss 0.32

Belgium 0.33

Poland 0.32

Cuba 0.27

Puerto rico 0.26

Ukraine 0.26

Israel 0.25

Austria 0.24

Czech 0.24

Israel 0.24

Ethiopia 0.21

Dominican 0.17

Hungary 0.17

Mexico 0.17

Colombia 0.17

Bulgaria 0.16

Nigeria 0.15

Denmark 0.14

Brazil 0.13

Indonesia 0.1

Balkans 0.1

Argentina 0.1

Mali 0.09

Thai 0.0 9

Saharan Africa 0.09

China 0.09

Egypt 0.07

Morocco 0.06

Benin 0.05

SUMMARY: in your face, Benin!

Well, that's it for now, people. Join me next time as I write 5,000 words describing the proper way to re-roll toilet paper back on the tube after you've unspooled the whole thing.

4 Comments so far

This was fantastic. So 813 * 0.008 = 101,625 songs total? Impressive. Now I will have to hear more about this godzilla rap battle.

François October 30th, 2012
5:48 am

Woohoo, France makes the top 10.
Lemme guess ? That'd be 100% of the French black metal you were talking about ? I mean, my country is surrounded by Sweden, Finland & Norway, which is telling !
Still, it'd be funny if you had some beret-sporting accordeon player greatest hits in the middle.

also bunch of electronic shit: ( encomiast, jean-maichel jarre, m87), industrial (vivenza), some new wave/cold wave stuff (clair obscur, metal urbain), but about half of it is prog: did you forget about Magma and their whole family of related bands?

Don’T have any accordions, but do have the old Django Reinheart album!

Horgh666 December 11th, 2012
11:47 pm

Goblin leads to techno because of the 70's-80's Italian techno/jazz fusion wiz band.
They are responsible for the soundtrack of almost every Dario Argento movie of the time.